Hello Everyone,

Gina and I experienced what every parent would never want to go through, especially with someone who barely took their first breath at life.

At our 36-week routine prenatal check-up, we both discovered that our baby, Hailey, had complications while being in the uterus. Shortly after, we began our journey with multiple doctor and specialist visits through the week and were scheduled for an induced delivery at 37 weeks.

Hailey was diagnosed with pleural effusion, which is fluid buildup around the lungs that prevents lung growth and oxygen intake.

At 37 weeks, Hailey was born (2/9/2025) and seemed like she was in good health by expressing typical baby behavior immediately after birth. Seconds after birth, doctors started to notice Hailey turning blue, indicating that she couldn’t breathe properly. They did everything in their power to mitigate her breathing in our delivery room, but it was proven too difficult due to her condition.

Once in the NICU, they started several treatments and procedures to give her oxygen to her vital organs. After trying to expand her blood vessels and alveoli in her lungs over several hours, her body was still unable to respond and recover from her sickness. (All of this was happening while being separated from Hailey.)

In those several hours of treatment and procedures, the team of doctors had no good news to share with us and recommended that Hailey be transferred to a specialty care hospital. They informed us that the best option that would have a chance to save Hailey was to perform an ECMO procedure. In short, ECMO is an artificial life support treatment that helps the lung or heart recover when both or one has failed. Not having much of a choice, we wanted to give Hailey a chance at life. We agreed to the procedure.

The same night of Hailey’s birth, she was transferred out to UCSF where they would perform the procedure. We did not get to go with Hailey to UCSF that night as we were not guaranteed a space to stay and with Gina still being a patient admitted.

The first day of treatment with ECMO is where she started to look more lively and well, but the following days after, she made no progress of improvement. In the process of all the treatments and procedures at UCSF, she continuously lost large amounts of blood and was on many IV fluids/medications to help control every aspect of her body.

On Hailey’s last day, we received heartbreaking news that she was not making any improvements and would not recover from her sickness and to think about options that would best interest in her well-being. Every option that was presented would not be a good outcome for her health.

Unfortunately, Hailey was unable to overcome her sickness and went to heaven on 2/12/2025. Gina and I would never have imagined something so horrible would happen to someone who was so young and precious to us.

We want to be transparent to every one of our supporters and donors that we are looking to raise enough for the transportation of Hailey from the hospital to the burial grounds. We would like to lay our baby down to rest peacefully.

Thank you for reading our story of Hailey’s short but forever loved life in this world. We loved and cherished her very much with the few days we got to spend with her and be by her bedside.